Is there a program that allows individulas who have been here for 10 years to obtain a green card? And is there an age limit as to when a mother can sponsor a child. A US citizen mother wants to sponsor her 39 yr old son - is this possible?

"The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 changed the name of a procedure for staying in the US from "suspension of deportation" to "cancellation of removal," and significantly increased the difficulty of getting permission to remain in the US after living here illegally for many years. Under the IIRIRA cancellation of removal procedure, illegal aliens must have lived in the US for at least 10 years and their removal from the US must cause "extreme or exceptional hardship" to the alien's legal resident or US-citizen spouse, parent or child. Furthermore, the clock toward the period of residence stops once the INS issues the alien a Notice to Appear to explain why the person should not be deported."

Unless there have been changes to this, your friend (if he entered without inspection) can only get legal status by going into deportation proceedings and proving extreme hardship to U.S. citizen spouse or child, or LPR.

Yes, a U.S. citizen mother can sponsor her child, but since the son's over 21, it will take longer. Below are the preference categories. Note that the length of wait will also be affected by the country he's from--people from Mexico, the Philippines, etc. will have a longer wait because of higher demand.

Type of Preference Relative
Preference Category
Average Wait

adult children of U.S. citizens
first preference
six years

spouses and children of permanent residents
second preference
five years for spouses and children under 21; nine years for children over 21

AliBA, how about if the Parent applied to their son over 21 years the wait time is about 9 years, if the parent became U.S citizen the wait time is six years? If the parent upgrades their petition from LPR to citizen then how long the son has to wait after the upgrade in case he waited 2 years before the upgrade?

If an LPR parent upgrades to a USC the wait time for a child will depend on if the child is married or not. Unmarried sons and daughters of citizens are the first preference (F1) category. Married are in third (F3) category. It also depends on the country. F1 priority date is Feb 22 2001. F3 is Jan 15 1998.